


Hair of The Dog

by Aurora Cee (SC182)



Category: Fast and the Furious Series, The Fast and the Furious (2001)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Life Partners, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Romance, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vampires, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 08:17:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6559060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SC182/pseuds/Aurora%20Cee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brian and Dom are different types of people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hair of The Dog

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Property of Universal, Justin Lin and Gary S. Thompson. I'm just borrowing them for a moment.
> 
> Repost from 2010.

The low purr of the Mazda was the only sound in the vacant streets in the as of yet unreformed warehouse district. The night was hot and muggy, almost viscous with something _extra_ in the air. If one knew what to look for then that _specialness_ would be pervading every inch of space and perfuming each molecule of air.  
  
It was Halloween. All Hallow’s Eve to the _supe_ community. The one night of the year when all grudges were set aside and everyone was given parley. Dom was late, not by his own choosing, but the night called for the fulfillment of rituals and observances. It was the one day of the year when he could forcibly drag himself to the cemetery. He’d placed his head against the still sun-warm face of his parents' headstones and sniffed the earth for any lingering trace of their scents. So many years gone by, now nothing but the faintest trace remained; even that Dom wasn't too sure about now. He took a final sniff to ground traces of their scents to his memory. After a solemn touch of Dom's forehead to the stone, he threw his head back and howled at the sleeping moon.  
  
Later that night, he found himself on the road. The light transitioning from yellow to red caused Dom to slow to a stop. The streets were dead, but in the distance, he could hear the celebrations in the night. His pack was going hard tonight, bordering on blitzed at El Negro Lobo with Hector and the rest of the local were-shifter community.  
  
He was going to his pack.  
  
His crew.  
  
His family.  
  
His dark eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror and away as the sensual hum of a finely tuned engine approached. From the corner of his eye, he could see a white body splashed with sharp ribbons of blue. The body was slung low and everything about it screamed barely street legal. The driver was unseen, but the ostentatious rev of the engine was as obvious as a cocked brow and a flirtatious smile.  
  
He nodded at the driver beyond the nighttime black windows. It was almost instinctual to know that the driver was smiling in acceptance of his challenge.  
  
Over the smell of engine oil, high grade gasoline, and the smells of the deserted industrialized environment, a familiar sound filled his ears. It was barely there and kept his interest.  
  
Dom swiveled his head back towards the light and waited for the transition back to green. _Five Four. Three. Two. One_. The rules of the race were unspoken. They were on a one-way street with the next light approximately a half mile away. Since they hadn’t spoken, no bets had been placed; the only exchange would be respect.  
  
Someone else had asked for his respect once. Gotten that from Dom and something else. The Skyline stayed apace, their noses almost in perfect alignment. Midway off the track, they passed one lonely streetlamp and Dom would swear that he caught the gleam of a broad white smile from beyond the tinted windows of the car. Dom listened and tried to anticipate the other driver punching the Nos. Four blocks were left and he counted to five and then the Skyline began to pull off. He smiled to himself, the mystery driver almost made him nervous.  
  
Dom waited until the Skyline was a full body length ahead of him before going for his own Nos. The smirk on his full lips blossomed into a full smile as the Mazda slipped through the second length and arced 360 degrees to face the slowing Skyline.  
  
After a string of seconds, the driver side door opened, “I almost had you.” Brian O'Conner said.  
  
_Almost had him_. “You.” Dom's tone was somewhere between surprised and amused.  
  
The Skyline cooled below the streetlight’s halo. Brian sat on the hood, he was a perfect picture of calmness and smiled brilliantly at Dom.  
  
Just seeing Brian made his feral side kick up like crazy. Half out of anger and the other half simmering hot and lusty but smelling like the bitter notes of betrayal.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Dom asked.  
  
“It’s Halloween, man. All sins are forgiven.”  
  
_Not hardly_ , Dom wanted to say. His eyes were hard as he took in the sight of Brian. He looked the same, if not better than the last time Dom had laid eyes on him, but his scent…was _different_. And different could mean a shitload of things.  
  
His ire was up and it was taking everything he had to not leap on Brian. “Thought you got out of L.A.?”  
  
There was an incandescent glow in Brian's eyes. “I did.” Brian answered.  
  
“And now you’re back?” To cause Dom more shit and heartache.  
  
“Yeah, I got into some trouble in Miami.”  
  
Dom shrugged. “Why doesn’t that surprise me.” Cop or not, O'Conner was a force of nature that swept through Dom's life and nearly drowned him before he realized it. What always confused him about their association was that Dom still missed Brian like a lost pack member--not as another beta or an omega but as a rare equal.  
  
Brian still hung back in the dark and Dom let him, though he was curious why. He breathed deeply allowing Brian’s scent to wash over him; yeah Brian knew exactly what he was doing and stiffened and began to move around the side of the car, putting space between them.  
  
They had never talked about it. The fact that Brian was one of them, but now, it was obvious that something was different. “Your scent…it’s _different_.” Not bad, just different. As if it was familiar but Dom couldn’t quite identify it with a name, though the underlying salt and sunshine that colored Brian’s scent were still the same.  
  
“I wanted to apologize.” Brian said, though his body language dictated that he intended to leave. "Just needed to make amends before I head out."  
  
Dom stepped closer. “You’re all about the drama, ain’t you, O’Conner? You make a big exit and fancy entrance like that and I doubt you're really ready to leave." Brian remained quiet, his eyes steadily locked on Dom’s approach. “You’re right. Hallow’s Eve and we’re all forgiven, so lets go. Everyone’s waiting at Hector’s.”  
  
He planned to keep talking, so he could get closer. “Mia missed you.” He watched Brian wince.  
  
“Tell her I’m sorry.”  
  
“You can tell her yourself.”  
  
“I can’t.” In a flash, Brian was in the car, reversing and zipping fast away from Dom. If it weren’t for the tire marks on the pavement, Dom wouldn't have been sure he made the whole thing up.

* * *

  
A few nights later at the garage, Brian watched from the shadows as Dom put in another long night.  
  
Dom almost swore seeing Brian had been a trick of his mind, because he’d searched. Again, he’d gone to find Brian, only to turn up with nothing. No one had seen him, no trace of his scent either. So it made sense to believe that his imagination had run away with him.  
  
Brian was unlike any alpha Dom had met. Not the regular sort. He could challenge and back down without losing position. Watching Brian, Dom had felt a desire to roll around and almost nip like he did with Vince and Leon or maybe yip a bit like when he was a carefree pup. Brian might have hid the were in him, but there was nothing he could hide about his scent.  
  
Dom wanted him in the pack. It didn’t seem like Brian belonged to one anyway. It would only be better for him if he joined one, made sense given how much trouble followed Brian around.  
  
“Yo, D--” Vince yelled from the door.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You gonna be much longer? Leon and Jess are getting the beer now and me and Let should be back in a while with the Chinese?” He nodded at the stack of papers in Dom’s hands. “You’ll be done by the time we come back?”  
  
“Naw, maybe another fifteen or twenty minutes.” Dom yelled back.  
  
Vince waved two fingers behind his head, indicating that he was peacing out for the time being. It was just after sunset. The tight hip popping _thumpa-thumpa_ of the radio filled the quiet spaces of the garage. He’d finished shuffling the last in and out sheets for the day. It was the small things that had a tendency to make Dom think about the little ironies and peculiarities of life. Small business owner. Racer. Were. Pack leader.  
  
It was the little things like realizing that he needed to make Jesse kick this obsession with some Japanese GPS thing that would run about eight grand and focus on fixing the mainline to Hector’s cousin’s fuel pump that occupied his thoughts.  
  
Lost in his thoughts he almost missed the subtle change in the air, his ear twitched reflexively at a sudden presence south of his back.  
  
“Forgot something?” Dom’s voice rumbled quietly, keeping a steady tone as if expecting Mia.  
  
A couple of footsteps forward, automatically to heavy to be Mia, a California male voice said, “Just thought I’d visit.”  
  
Dom turned to see the solid silhouette of Brian standing assuredly in the garage’s doorway. A few steps followed bringing him fully out of darkness. The act, though, gave Dom the type of chill that sent a jolt of electricity down his back, making the hairs on his arms stand. “We’re closed,” he growled.  
  
“You’re never closed.” Brian smiled with a grin that was too bright to be coy. “Only bustas close shop and closed shops only get bustas.” The words Dom once had said with all too much seriousness, when repeated back by Brian sounded just a little silly, considering that Brian delivered them as his own words rather than an imitation of Dom’s.  
  
Crossing his arms over his chest, Dom resembled a scowling mountain. “I know what I said. Question is why are you here?”  
  
There was no slick deflection, no smile, nor attempt at smooth sarcasm; Brian looked nervous—unsure, so unlike that cocky punk that wanted Dom’s respect and saved Vince from the semi but ended up breaking Mia’s heart and Dom’s, too.  
  
“Wanted to see if I could come back. I still owe you a ten second car.”  
  
True, he thought, though the stony expression belied the feeling. Dom looked Brian over again analyzing him. The cop stood under the invisible tension of a heavy load. Proud as hell he was but Brian still had the sad look of a dog with its tail dragging between his legs. It was easier understanding dogs. Of that, Dom could attest.  
  
“Guess you decided to stick around.” The statement sounding almost like an accusation. “Where have you been?”   
  
After a shrug or two, Brian replied, “Here and there.”  
  
Every society had rules, social norms that its members were expected to follow. Just as one wouldn’t snoop through a neighbor’s house; the same could be applied to sniffing another without permission.  
  
Scent was like a fingerprint. One was born with it and no matter what it would never changed.  
  
That was what stopped Dom short. Brian’s scent. His scent was gone. What Dom had smelled before was old, mixed up and dilute like his parents' in the grave.  
  
Unlike before, in the time when Dom and Brian had been following a fast moving track of friendship, camaraderie, and the indefinable but omnipresent _other_ , Dom had known Brian by the subtle scent of an unbonded were comforting.  
  
Now it was gone, leaving Dom with the question of how.  
  
“You better keep out of sight.” The lack of scent was disconcerting as was Brian’s pallor. The glow of his skin made him seem alien and not like the man that Dom had come to know in a time before.  
  
But still he wanted, felt the beast in the back of his mind shift from a walk to a trot at the sight of him. It was alive and aware of Brian, maybe just as confused as Dom was. There was something else there below the memory of Brian's scent: the faint odor that accompanied approaching death or a trace of vamp.  
  
When his mind made two and two equal something more than four, Dom clenched his jaws to prevent his teeth from coming out in a real snarl.“I should rip your throat out.” His nose wasn’t wrong. A vamp in his place, he shuddered at the thought.  
  
Brian walked just a step closer and stopped. Brian looked like a dulled photograph of himself.“It won’t taste that good if you did.” He tilted his head to the side and Dom’s eyes made out the soft pink puckered craters on Brian’s otherwise smooth skin.  
  
That feeling that normal people seem to get when the hair sticks up on their arms was a shared link between humans and weres. A natural animal instinct that passed down through the bloodlines from the mother-father of them all. It was failing him now, telling him things that he knew couldn’t be true.  
  
Dom realized this wasn’t the first time he’d seen Brian recently, not in the least. All those apparitions that had seemed to lurk out of his peripheral vision were real. One in particular that seemed to hover in the corner of his eye just the other night at the shop. Now his mind told him it was Brian, even if smell said no one was there.  
  
Maybe the stress of the months before, months of his life after Brian Spilner, scratch that—O’Conner was finally getting to him. Making him crazy. If he was lucky, he was just being haunted. But that too was another can of worms.  
  
“What are you doing here?” He asked again, because Brian hadn’t given a reason.  
  
Brian’s smile was a bright as always. It was the same as Dom’s memories.“I hope you didn’t think the other night was a fluke.”  
  
Dom surveyed Brian’s ride with feigned disinterest. “I didn’t take you for a Skyline type.” Brian gave him the silent okay to inspect that car, because there was one rule that applied to all racers: no looking under another driver’s hood. “Nice little kitty cat you have here. It purrs nicely.”  
  
Brian grinned with pride. “My cat doesn’t purr; it sings.”

Dom knotted his arms over his chest.“Why are you back in L.A.?” For months, Dom had looked, put out subtle feelers on the street, through the circuit to anyone who might know the Snow Man. He hadn’t heard a thing. Then again, their little community had a unique way of sniffing out outsiders. The nose allowed him to gain access to the team, but Brian's ballsiness and his uncanny ability to _fit_ in allowed him to stay.  
  
It was weird as hell having him gone. "Had to lay low for a bit. Just get out of town until there was no more heat. I ended up in Miami, if you can believe it, with even more heat. Then me and my boy settled some business for the Feds and after that I've just been around."  
  
“So here and there?” That was his explanation of where he’d been. The answer to _why_ was already making Dom’s head hurt without actually hearing it.  
  
Instinctively, a part of him recognized Brian as being of his kind and with this recognition came the natural belief that Brian would be a permanent fixture on the team, to Mia and in his life. When that didn’t come to pass, Dom had literally sulked off and had gone to ground. The only difference between a hurt man and hurt wolf was a wolf had the freedom to bay at the moon and snap his jaws when in pain. A man had to cry alone.  
  
He looked Brian over again. The garage was better lit than an abandoned street corner in the middle of warehouse district. The humming tubes of light above head were designed for long-term industrial use. In the light, Brian was obviously not the same.  
  
A little over a year had passed since the heist gone wrong. Naturally, there was the expectation of noticing the small changes that occurred with the passage of time—cuts, scars, stress lines, and weight changes. Anything to show that life had continued on for the person under inspection. Brian looked the same: down to the way his hair lazily curled and shone like real gold; he was unchanged. A sign that put Dom’s senses on high alert.  
  
Stepping into Brian’s space, he tucked his head under Brian’s neck and sniffed. Screw social graces. He needed to know the truth. The change in scent and the lack of heat emanating from Brian’s skin caused Dom to leap back with arms ready and teeth beginning to drop. “What happened to you?”  
  
Brian turned his neck from side to side, giving Dom ample opportunity to get a sniff. “Don’t you know it’s not nice to smell someone without permission?” Brian joked. It fell flat and the tension between them was palatable. Brian remained planted across from Dom. “You smell it, don’t you?” _The wrongness._  
  
“What’s wrong with your scent?”Like fingerprints, everyone had a natural scent. It could be altered in intensity, but never completely removed and never changed to something else entirely.  
  
“One of my superiors thought I did my job too well. Wanted to reward me for my work. Seems that he had a bone to pick with you since you guys were cutting into his take.” Brian canted his neck and then pulled up his shirt sleeve, exposing the paleness of his forearm to Dom’s scrutiny, showing off a faint set of scars just below the crook of his elbow. “He thought I looked good and wanted to see if I tasted the same way.” He said too breezily.  
  
Brian had been bitten. Impossible. He’d never heard of a were surviving such. Their bloodlines didn’t mix. “Bull.”  
  
“Kid you not." Two of Brian’s fingers trailed over the barely there marks. “He wasn’t happy when he realized I was tainted. Dumped me off somewhere and waited for me to die. He wasn’t happy when I didn’t.”  
  
“But you’re a were; you should have died.”  
  
“Nope, only half.” The sleeve rolled back down and for the first time that evening Brian broke eye contact with Dom. “He found me amusing at first. His interesting little pet project that just wouldn’t die. Let me tell you: changing hurt like a bitch.”  
  
Dom had never heard of a vamp-were or a were-vamp. It was so unnatural. The two groups were completely segregated. All the stories he’d ever heard about half-breeds were old  wives tales. They were said to be crazy or hideously deformed because they were half-dead. “What are you now?”  
  
“I don’t know.” His eyes spoke of loneliness, but Dom didn’t think Brian would have the balls to say so aloud, though his eyes just screamed as much. “Can’t hang around the weres too long, because of the scent thing and vamps--Let’s say when you kill your maker, you become a persona non-grata wherever you go.”  
  
Dom’s brow furrowed incredulously. “And you came here?”  
  
“Got anything other than questions?” Brian said. “It’s a little lonely being the only one. It’s not like I got a pack anymore. A lot of weres find the lack of scent unnerving.”  
  
Dom scowled. He couldn’t imagine being without his pack. Living without Mia, Vince, Letty, Leon or Jesse or any of the others in the community wasn’t something Dom could do. The anger that he felt towards Brian steadily slipped away.  
  
Brian dropped his shoulders and looked away. Demonstrating law number one in the were community: don’t test the alpha without the ability to back it up. “Sorry,” he shrugged. “I wanted to be somewhere for once with people I trust.”  
  
“Funny you talk about trust.” Dom stalked around him slowly, assessing him with hard eyes. “We trusted you and got stabbed in the back. Seems like you’re pretty good at it." _Don’t forget he gave the keys to get your freedom._ There was that. He let him run. “You’re not going to bring trouble to my door.”  
  
Brian’s blue eyes shone with a preternatural light. “I’m trying not to.”  
  
Dom considered himself sold. His wolf sat on its hunches and waited for Brian to come to him. “What do you need? A place to wait out the sun?”  
  
“Kinda sick of running and I’m still figuring my system out.” Brian didn’t have the gauntness of a vamp that hadn’t feed in a while, but he didn’t look sated either.  
  
Dom could empathize with having freedom and wanting to keep it on his terms. Brian’s eyes didn’t waver from Dom's. For some reason, the challenge didn’t bother him, not like it would with Vince or Leon, or even Jesse. That connection was still there, had brought Brian back, and Dom  acknowledged that he couldn’t turn Brian away. “You can stay. If you get bitey then we may have a problem.” Dom warned him without much heat in his words.  
  
“I’ll try to keep my fangs in check." Brian smirked.  "I'm looking forward to running with the pack again. Plus, I still owe you a ten second car.” Tension bleeding out with the fractional increase in the size of his grin.  
  
“Call us even,” Dom said. “The attic is the only windowless room in the house, if you want it.” He pointed vaguely upward, "I can't promise that it will do anything for your tan lines but it'll keep you with the pack."

Just watching Brian unwind made Dom’s wolf excited. The thought of having Brian near overcame the knowledge that he was a half-breed. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

Having Brian around during the day or night was all good for Dom and Dom's wolf. Making his pack whole was all that mattered.


End file.
